MacBook Air or MacBook Pro?

I would also like to know the answer to this question. The Air is preferable but I have no idea if it can handle programming tools with ease....

Macbook air will be fine for what you intend on doing, but if you think you will at some point start using it to manipulate images or graphics on a regular basis the i would suggest the low end Macbook pro 13". The air will do this without problem but you get a lot more for your money with the pro.

With the difference in price being quite small i would opt for the 13" pro.

Then i would think about RAM, as you may know you can't upgrade at a later date so i am of the opinion that if you can, you should upgrade RAM if you can afford it.

The last thing to think about is Retina display or not, if yes then you have to go for a Macbook pro. Personally i think Retina displays are amazing and when i go to my old MBP i really notice the drop in quality of how things look on it.

You see it is very easy to start out with one budget and end up at something completely different, but they are worth it.

I still run my 6 year old MBP every day, it has the latest operating system on it and is still lightning fast.

Whichever you choose i know you'll never regret it, and probably wish you had made the change sooner.

I've had both a Macbook Pro and Air. If you want an ultra-light computer, get the Air. But the Pro is a professional machine -- so it's more suitable for developers. That's not to say that the air can't handle dev tasks, but the pro is a better machine. The pro will set you back more, though. I currently use a pro as my main machine as well as some iMacs and a Mac Mini.

I'd say go with the Retina Pro - it's an amazing machine and it should last you a while! Good luck!

I was in the same boat as you for several months. Originally I had planned to buy a new laptop January 2nd so I could claim it on my 2014 taxes but Best Buy had the laptops on sale Black Friday and they were the lowest prices I had seen so the price for the PRO over the Air was just an additional 40 dollars. A few things that made me consider the PRO over the Air are: 1) The PRO has an optical drive included when the Air did not. 2) Hard drive space on the Air I was considering was only, if I recall, 128gb when the PRO included 500gb.

A positive about both is they each have USB ports and a thunderbolt. I like thunderbolt because for only an additional 25 dollars I was able to buy a thunderbolt to DVI adapter and hook up an extra 24" monitor so I could run dual monitors.

With the additional hard drive space I will create a few scripts and find out if I can do cron jobs on my mac and use it as a processing server on my network.